


The Devil's Backbone

by hapakitsune



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-02-22 19:33:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2519294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapakitsune/pseuds/hapakitsune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When in doubt, go with what you know. The Winter Soldier knows how to make himself useful. Steve Rogers knows how to be persistent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been struggling with this fic since shortly after the movie came out. There have been roughly 10000 fics about what happened to everyone post-movie in the intervening time. Here's another one. 
> 
> Thanks to formerlydf and war_kitten for looking over this for me and talking to me about my character interpretations and also helping this finally see the light of day.

i.

Once, there was a boy called Bucky. 

What a childish name, he thought. What a childish face. He could see how someone would think it was him – the same eyes, perhaps, the same mouth – but he had never been that uselessly naïve. He had never gone into battle believing he was doing the ‘right’ thing; he followed orders, and that was all. Righteousness was relative to where you stood, and he always stood on the side of bringing order to the restless, erasing with one – two – quick flicks of his finger the life on the other end of his scope. 

Once there was a boy called Bucky who followed Captain America into battle. Barnes believed in the Captain, and maybe that was understandable. It was easy to take orders, to live for someone who found you useful, to follow them to the edge. But only so far as necessary. Barnes had died for Captain America. What a fool. 

He did not favor his arm as he walked through the exhibit. It would be too telling, and though he did not think there was anyone in the crowd of tourists who might see him for what he was, he could feel the gaze of the security cameras on the back of his neck, pricking like needles against his hairline. If HYDRA wasn’t looking for him, someone would be, and he hadn’t ever been out in the world for this long. He remembered that. 

He used a credit card stolen from an unsuspecting man with a Belarussian accent to buy himself an illustrated book of the Captain’s adventures. He didn’t open it until he was safely back in the hotel room far out on the edge of town. The Captain was wrong about him. He knew that he was not, had never been this _Bucky_ , this wide-eyed idiot from Brooklyn. And yet –

In unbidden moments, the Captain’s face came to mind, slackened. Unresisting beneath him. His cheekbone swollen. Bleeding through his stomach and back and likely to die. His eyes, one swelling shut, but the other clear and certain as he stared up, like he _knew_ him. No doubt in his voice at all. No hesitation as the Captain said to kill him. _I’m with you until the end of the line._  
  
The girl at the reception desk (twenty or twenty-one, college student) bade him good evening. He said nothing. He had not spoken to her since he arrived at the hotel four days previously and paid for the room in stolen cash. She seemed unfazed, always greeting him with cheer when he walked by her desk. He disliked the idea that she recognized him now. He was unaccustomed to staying in one place for long. That was the whole point of him, after all, and after living his life as a ghost, there was nothing more unsettling than being _known_.

That, he told himself, was the reason he pulled the Captain from the water. That was the reason he went to that ridiculous exhibit. For the first time he could remember he was known and not merely as a gun for hire: he was known to be someone. Never mind that the Captain was clearly mistaken, even if he heard, sometimes, the echo of his voice ( _I had him on the ropes_ ) when he stood in the middle of a crowded street. He was known, and if he was to fight this enemy, an enemy that didn’t – wouldn’t – fight back, he had to know what the Captain thought he knew. 

First things first: there was once a boy called Bucky. 

 

James Buchanan Barnes was born in 1917 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. (He marked this down as a place to avoid.) Steve Grant Rogers was born in 1918. They met when Steve got in a fight with some older boys and Barnes came to his rescue. (How sweet.) They were inseparable from that day forward. No records remained to show who had dubbed him Bucky, but the nickname had stuck. In a blue sidebar, underneath the words _Fun Fact!_ , it said that in the movie about the Captain they had made in the seventies, they turned Barnes into a spunky teenager. By all accounts, this was a very unpopular choice. 

There was more – Barnes’s service record, his capture by German forces, his subsequent rescue when the Captain learned he had been taken prisoner. His part in the creation and missions of the Howling Commandos. His numerous awards, all given posthumously. His death, falling from a train at high speed. The Captain’s sorrow. That last takes up nearly a full column of text, each of the surviving members of the Commandoes recalling the mission and what had happened after. 

_I never saw Steve more upset in the whole time I knew him,_ said Peggy Carter. (SHIELD agent; former target until they decided she was more useful alive.) _Barnes was his whole world for most of his life._

And then it became clear. Love, that most powerful of hallucinogens, had shown the Captain what he most desired: a piece of his old world, returned to him ripe for saving. A little bit of wish fulfillment. And he had latched onto the Captain’s certainty. He had hoped, for a moment, that the Captain might be right, and that was sign enough that he was out of his depth. He left the book on the bed, gathered what belongings he had, and left without a backwards glance. 

 

The flight to Paris was uncomfortable, but then he hadn’t expected first class conditions from smugglers. They hadn’t said much when he passed over the money, just showed him where to sit and told him they’d kill him if tried to steal anything. He sat in the back with the cargo and watched the land disappear from beneath them, the ocean rolling out in soft waves. Salt water would be hell on his arm, but from up high it looked almost inviting. 

He didn’t sleep, too aware of how precariousness of his situation. Instead, he listened to the pilots talk, barely audible over the noise of the engines. They spoke a fractured mix of French and Brazilian Portuguese, fast enough that it took concentration to work out what they were saying. The cargo was a shipment of weapons going to a buyer in the 20e arrondissement. They didn’t trust the buyer, a slimy white man from Germany (the pilot’s description). He seemed the type to back out of an agreement, or find his own way out. 

They landed outside the city and hid the plane beneath camouflage mesh. Bucky handed over the remainder of his payment, shook the pilot’s hand, and didn’t let go when she tried to pull away. She stared up at him – she was a tall woman, but still shorter than him – and said, “If you don’t let go, you’re gonna lose that hand too.” Her English was heavily accented; she was the one who spoke Portuguese. 

“You need protection,” he said in Portuguese. “To make sure the buyer does not renege on his end of the bargain.”

She exchanged looks with her copilot before squaring her shoulders and meeting his eyes. “What do you propose?”

“Thirty percent,” he said. 

“Fifteen.”

“Twenty-five,” he said. “No lower.” 

“Deal. And if you double-cross us, I’ll be sure that the security footage of you boarding our plane is found.” She smiled sharply.

“Fine.” They shook. He released her hand. Unlike many, she did not flex her fingers to test them. He respected that. 

“You can call me Taís. He is Edouard.” She indicated her copilot, who half-bowed ironically. “Tonight, we sleep here. Tomorrow, we drive into the city for the meet.” She didn’t ask his name; he didn’t volunteer one. 

They passed the night in a smuggler’s hold hidden not far from the plane. Taís cut her hair close to the scalp, scraps of black hair falling to the concrete floor. She offered the scissors to him. He shook his head and asked if they had any masks. Taís’s eyes flicked from his arm to his face. She nodded and found a black domino in a box beneath one of the cots. 

“It isn’t much,” she said. 

“It’ll be enough.” It fit as well as could be expected, but that was all he needed. If Taís’s fears about the buyer were correct, he would recognize the mask and the arm. There were times notoriety could be a gift. 

Edouard, he was learning, did not speak much. Edouard asked only if there was anything particular he would like to eat, his accent as Parisian as it came, before setting a pot to boil on the stove. Taís and Edouard moved around each other with the casual grace of those long accustomed to sharing space. He sat at their table and watched without comment, admiring the efficacy of trust. 

He devoured more than twice what they ate and could have eaten more, but he was conscious of his tenuous hold on their need. He could find work – there was always work – but this had the benefit of being soon and close. It would be best to make himself useful to them, as off the grid as they were. Anyone who might come looking for him wouldn’t think to seek out a tiny smuggling outfit. As long as they needed him, he was safe in the shelter of their insignificance.

He slept lightly, waking to the frequent creaks of Edouard in bed. He would have to relearn how to sleep, he realized upon waking. He had lost the trick of it somehow. Taís made coffee and drank hers like a shot. He sipped his, taking out the body armor he had packed away and outfitting himself, the weight of each gun and knife anchoring him back into himself. He blacked his eyes, slipped the mask over his face, and straightened his shoulders. He missed the weight of a sniper rifle against his shoulder, but he could buy a new one. He said he was ready and turned to face them. Edouard shivered and crossed himself. 

Taís was more pragmatic. “That’ll make the fucker think twice about double-crossing us,” she said. 

It was a long ride into the city. He rode up front, as cover, the other two switching off as driver. He guessed, from the increasing white of Edouard’s knuckles and the clipped syllables of Taís’s speech, that this was the biggest deal they had made. They seemed small time, more familiar with the routine of smuggling art or jewels than the crates of weapons they had now. But with SHIELD gone and the major arms of HYDRA on the run, the world was opening up. There were new business opportunities for everyone. 

The German was waiting for them when they arrived in the loading bay. He wore a white suit and prim glasses. His gray hair was combed back against his scalp. At his side were two men of imposing height, and from the shift of their bodies it was clear they were armed. Taís drew herself up tall and strode forward confidently to shake his hand. It was almost enough to hide the quaver in her voice when she greeted him. 

“Mr. Zemo,” she said, clear enough for him and Edouard to hear from their perch in the truck. “We have the shipment. Do you have our payment?”

He slid silently from the passenger seat in the truck and paced towards Taís, keeping his footsteps light. He knew the moment Zemo recognized him; there was an almost imperceptible shudder, a straightening of the spine. Zemo uncurled his hand from its fist and tapped it against his thigh, a wordless command for his bodyguards to stay put. “Miss Taís, I had no idea you were keeping such exalted company.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Taís said. He was almost proud of the amount of bravado she put into her voice. “The payment, Mr. Zemo?”

They exchanged the keys for the truck for the briefcase, and he fell into step behind Taís and Edouard, sparing Zemo one backwards glance. Zemo saluted him. He didn’t respond. 

Taís didn’t say a word until they were sitting in a café on the Champs-Elysses. He had removed his mask and goggles and, at Taís’s pointed look, wiped the worst of the eyeblack from his face. He did not blend in with the crowd, but he was used to being unnoticed. He sank back into his seat, picked up the coffee delivered to them by the waitress (twenty-seven, an artist judging by the paint flecks clinging to the ends of her dark hair), and retreated into himself. 

Or tried to; Taís spoke when the noise around them had picked up enough to mask their conversation, asking, “Is there anyone looking for you?”

He nodded. Anyone left of HYDRA, no doubt; anyone who had read the files available to them thanks to the actions of Romanoff; and the Captain. The Captain would be looking for him. “I’m sure there are.”

“Will they hurt us?” Taís asked. 

He considered it. “Likely not,” he said. “You are just employing me.” 

“Zemo was scared,” Edouard said. “You made him nervous.”

“I make a lot of people nervous,” he said. He lifted the coffee to his lips and sipped. It was, surprisingly, delicious. 

 

When they weren’t hunkered in a smuggler’s hole, Taís and Eouard lived in the student quarter. Taís explained, in clipped tones, that there had once been three more to their operation. Two had been captured by Interpol working an outside job. The third had been shot. “Who knew that smuggling fish could be so dangerous?” Taís said. The weapons cache had been their best deal in months, and Taís knew that it was likely to go badly, but they were running low on money. 

“You don’t know who he is,” Edouard scolded when he thought he wasn’t listening. “Stop telling him all our secrets.”

Taís shrugged, looked over at him. “He seems the loyal type.”

He didn’t know about loyalty, but he did like the routine of having orders to follow. And Taís was orderly and precise. During the day they checked out targets for the pettier of their crimes. He was to accompany them, stay back, and watch for trouble. She gave him new clothes (“From Jean – the one who was shot,” she admitted) and had Edouard teach him to pick locks. He was a fast learner; his hands seemed to have the knack of it. When he went to sleep in his borrowed bed, he looked at his hands and thought about kneeling on concrete as the wind whistled and someone laughed, saying, “I can’t believe we locked ourselves out,” and he hissed back, “Hush, I’m trying to concentrate.”

“ _Bucky_?” 

He woke suddenly before dawn, and he realized after reaching for his gun that it was just Edouard starting the coffee in the tiny kitchen. His back hurt. The mattress was too soft. He stretched, thought about going for a run, and looked around for shoes before straightening. A run? When had he ever gone for a run? 

“You should go,” Edouard said when he asked about running shoes. “You seem wound tight.”

“I don’t run,” he said. “Not for fun.”

“Don’t think of it as fun.” Edouard opened the hall closet and pointed to the floor, where several pairs of shoes were lined up. “Think of it as knowing your surroundings.”

He ran through the streets, cataloguing storefronts and street turns, noting every person who turned to look at him. (Student, coming back from class, works part time at a bakery; bookstore owner, has a knife strapped to his ankle; a young boy in a Captain America shirt, visiting Paris with his family.) They didn’t seem hostile, more curious, and it wasn’t until he returned to the apartment that he realized how much he stood out with his long hair and metal arm, even with most of it covered by a shirt. He ran his hand through the strands, winced as his arm creaked. 

His hand seemed to know how to repair his arm, too. It came to him naturally enough, and he was glad of it. He Edouard stood in the doorway after giving him a box of tools and watched him open up the arm from memory and begin repairing the damage from Washington, left unattended until now.

“Does it hurt?” Edouard asked.

“No,” he said. 

“How did you lose the old one?” 

He was falling, a hand reaching for him too late – screaming – blinking awake to – “Long story,” he said shortly. 

Edouard nodded. He stayed in the doorway, half sentinel, half witness. 

Three days later, Taís received word on a client. “Twenty-five percent,” she said to him, “if you scare the shit out of him like you did Zemo.” 

 

He stayed in Paris for three months, building up his shares until he had enough to get by without Taís and Edouard. He didn’t count the money each night, but knowing it was there was a small victory. It was his money, earned by him for himself, and he could do things like outfit himself with the guns he favored. No more Soviet bullets for him, and that would have to do. Soviet bullets were his signature, easily identified and even more easily tracked. Romanoff would know to look for it. The Captain would too. 

Taís and Edouard had little cause for a bodyguard as equipped as him, though Taís clearly took pleasure in the surprised looks of their clients when he stepped up beside her, never doing anything more threatening than looking straight at them. Half of his power was reputation, the reflexive shiver his appearance sent down the spines of the weak-willed. There was hardly any need for him to lift a finger. 

He left while Taís and Edouard slept, taking his money and his rifle and a bag of the dead man’s clothes. The city was blanketed in early morning fog, the dawn light failing to pierce the clouds, and he took the time for one backwards glance at the streets he had run every morning, before he hotwired a motorcycle and sped away. 

After Paris came Berlin. German came even easier to him than French. He spent five weeks as bodyguard to a corrupt politician, feeling like there were eyes on the back of his neck the entire time. _They’re all corrupt_. _Not all of them, Bucky. Have a little faith in people._ He didn’t sleep well the entire time, waking frequently and expecting to see Zola – that was his name, wasn’t it, the scientist who gave him his arm – hovering over him. _Are you awake, my friend?_ He took to sitting at the window and watching the traffic below, guessing how far the fall would be from here. 

His politician was shot through the arm with an arrow three days before a big speech before the German parliament. His politician sank to the ground with a surprised cry, and he had his gun out a moment later, searching the buildings up on high for the shooter. He caught a flash – reflected sunlight – from the roof across the street, and he set off at a run. The arrows made it obvious; he knew this shooter, had encountered him once in Budapest and never once caught sight of his face. SHIELD, or former at this point. Dangerous. 

He intercepted him on the stairs, blocking his path down and pushing him back with his metal hand. The shooter looked surprised, but didn’t flinch. “I always thought Tasha was screwing with me,” he said. “But I guess you do exist.”

“Who sent you?” he asked. “SHIELD is gone, so who is your master?”

“I’m like you,” the shooter said. “I’m freelancing.” He held out his hand. “Clint Barton.”

He didn’t take the offered hand. “I’ve fought you before,” he said. “I will win.”

“Probably,” Barton said. “But you know, I’m pretty wily.” He grinned, reckless, and stabbed him in the shoulder, right where the metal met flesh. He jerked back, startled, and Barton snatched the knife back, called, “Next time, friend,” and jumped down between the flights of stairs. He gave chase, but by the time he reached the back exit, Barton was gone. 

He stitched up the wound on his own, biting a piece of wood to keep from shouting at the pain. _Stop fidgeting, Steve, I’m trying to fix you up so you don’t look even uglier._ He packed his bags as soon as he had finished and left on the next train out of the city. 

He took a contract in Greece, an assassination that he completed within twelve hours of receiving the assignment, and took another in Egypt that took three months of surveillance. He cut his hair in Israel to ward off the heat but stayed there only two days before leaving town. Too much competition. He steered clear of Russia and former Bloc countries, stuck to high population areas and spoke only to those who hired him and the go-betweens. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched or the creeping sensation of someone at his back. He picked up his masks again, scraped the star from his shoulder like it would help hide him, and spent less time in the open. 

His tail made herself known five hours after he landed in Hong Kong, appearing to him a crowd of people, her red hair as bright a warning as a flare. She crossed her arms, stared him dead in the eye, and he remembered a hot day in Odessa, arms steady on the sniper rifle as she put herself between him and the target. She would still bear his scar; he remembered how she fell to her knees, white with pain, even as she raised her guns and fired up toward his perch. One had grazed close enough to leave a mark on his arm. 

“ _Privet_ ,” she said. She stood wide-stanced, loose. Ready to fight or to run. “I have a few scars to return.”

He shot at her, but she was fast and had learned his ways, diving for cover before he had finished pulling the trigger. The crowds around them parted, running from the shots. She fired back at him, aiming for his knees. This was not her style, he knew; she preferred up close when she could get it, and sure enough, she was up a moment later, knocking the gun from his hand with a flying kick. He knocked her back with a fist to the shoulder, but she caught his knee with her foot, sending him staggering, and then she was on him, a needle in his neck, and a whispered, “Spokoynoy nochi,” in his ear.

 

He woke ( _I thought you were dead_ ) and she was waiting, sitting in a chair across the room. There was a gun in her lap, aimed at him. He was not restrained. 

“You’re an idiot,” he said, sitting up. 

“I don’t want to capture you,” Romanoff said. She smiled, cold. “I want you to turn yourself in.”

“Why would I do that?”

Romanoff leaned back. She kept her hand on her gun. “Steve seems to think there’s something good inside you.”

“He’s an idiot, then,” he said. He rose from the bed. “He’s created some kind of fairytale for himself.” He believed this; he told himself he believed this. 

Romanoff raised her eyebrows, pointed. “Has he?” 

He edged toward the window, careful to move slowly. He knew she would shoot – perhaps not fatally, but she wasn’t afraid to hurt him. “Don’t tell me you believe him.”

“Curious accent you have,” she said instead of answering. “I’ve studied a lot about accents, you know. One of the hazards of my profession. And yours sounds less Russian than Brooklyn.”

He threw a knife at her; she moved out of its path without blinking. It lodged in the wall beside her head. “Tell the Captain he can look for someone else to save,” he said, and he opened the window to escape out into the night. 

He was even more careful now, choosing only the most off-the-radar operations – one- or two-people outfits that needed a day or two’s worth of help. He worked his way east, across the continent, to Kyoto and then several weeks on a ship in the Pacific as insurance against pirates. He was seasick for a day before he adjusted to the rocking and shifting of the ground beneath his feet, and once he was on land he swore to avoid sea travel for as long as possible. 

He spent two months in Chile not doing much of anything other than watching a house in the mountains and reporting every person he saw enter it. It was cool up in the trees, and he found himself almost enjoying the rough ground and the prepackaged food sent by his employer. She only gave her name as Melinda and, once he had returned with a notepad full of an untidy scrawl that surprised him in its legibility, thanked him with a home cooked meal that he found hard to refuse. 

“Not many take notes by hand anymore,” she said as she flipped through it. She had a fighter’s grace, even when just leaning against her kitchen counter. “But this might be smarter. Can’t hack paper.”

“It seemed more efficient,” he said. 

Melinda hmmed thoughtfully and tucked the pad in the back of her waistband. “Sit, why don’t you,” she said. “You were out there a long time.”

He ate more than he expected, ate until he was full enough to fill the space between his throat and his stomach that had ached with emptiness since he pulled the Captain from the Potomac. He had been awake for more than twice the entire time he had spent out of cryo before. He didn’t like it; he had hated the cage, but how he hated what freedom offered him. 

“Let me know when you’re back in town,” Melinda said. The sun was setting over the mountains, and he was comfortable, sated by good food and a job completed. “I appreciate hard work.”

He thanked her awkwardly and left before the sun had finished dipping below the horizon. In a coffee shop, he bought a newspaper with the Captain on the front page and caught a bus going north, restlessness slipping beneath his skin. The sky grew dark and he watched the road vanish beneath them, vision blurring until he fell asleep against the window. 

He read the newspaper when he awoke, slouched in the back of a restaurant off the side of the road. The Captain had been busy, he saw. He had a team, Barton and Romanoff among them, and they had been spending time in Germany. Damage in excess of several billion dollars, but they had three people in their custody. The Captain looked tired, even with the mask. He wondered if the Captain had any scars from his bullets, if the Captain carried around his mark, or if that perfect conditioning included scar-less healing. 

There was a contract available, a hit on a weapons dealer making the most of SHIELD weapons stolen before the dismantling. He took the shot on a Tuesday afternoon, the back of his neck slick with sweat and his hands steady on his rifle. He took no pleasure in the kill, only satisfaction in the clean entry and exit, the spray of blood on the sidewalk as people began to scream. He methodically took apart his gun and left silently, disappearing into the crowd as sirens sounded in the distance. 

“Impressive,” his employer said, handing over his payment. “Would you be interested in a more permanent position? I’m looking to put together a team.” 

He considered it. “What kind of team?”

“Special Ops. Freelance jobs.” He held out a card that read _Vasily Karpov_ in English and Cyrillic. “Much more freedom than I suspect you are accustomed to. Bureaucracies make everything so much more complicated. Give me a call if you’re interested.” 

He took it and tucked it away with his payment. Karpov tracked the movement hungrily. “I’ll consider it.” 

He didn’t intend to call back. He meant to move on, leave the Americas again and stay far away from the United States. Alone in his hotel room, he turned the card over in his fingers. Somewhere, maybe in New York, the Captain was debriefing his team. He was thinking about the mission and taking pride in having executed it well. He was settling into place outside his military career, his time in SHIELD. There was the next mission and that was enough. 

He called Karpov.

 

His team consisted of four people: a former Mossad agent called Aviva; a mercenary who went by the moniker Bravo; their leader Yuki; and himself. They called him John or Doe when they bothered to call him anything at all, and joked frequently about his hair, which was growing long once again. He liked them. 

Karpov found them jobs, sending them across South America, up through the US, across Canada, sometimes to Europe. He squatted high up in trees, on the tops of buildings, on hills with his rifle at his shoulder. When he gazed through his scope, he thought for a moment he saw a flash of blue, but when he looked up again it was only Yuki’s earpiece, flashing a signal to Bravo. 

They captured a weapons lockup in South Dakota (“Why South Dakota?” Bravo asked, and Aviva said dryly, “Because no one ever wants to go there”) and celebrated afterwards, drinking in a circle in the middle of the floor, passing around a bottle of vodka Bravo had brought “just in case.” He didn’t drink a lot – didn’t much like the burn of it down his throat and it didn’t do anything for him anyway – but there was something companionable about trading stories like they were around a campfire. 

_“I bet Barnes knows a few ghost stories.”_

_“He does. He liked scaring me when we were little kids, didn’t you?”_

_“Me? I seem to remember you making Teddy Hart pee his pants –”_

“Who’s the hardest fight you’ve ever had?” Aviva asked, kicking out her legs and knocking her foot against Bravo’s. “The one you thought you’d never win.”

“I always win,” Bravo said. Aviva kicked. “Ow! For Chrissakes! It was probably Stark, you know, Iron Man.” 

“Well, he does have a fully weaponized suit of armor,” Yuki said. 

“Exactly. Wasn’t fair. So I got the hell out of dodge.” Bravo took the bottle of vodka back and lifted it in salute. “One of these days I’d like to buy him a drink. And punch him in the face.”

“Oh, but his face is so lovely.” Yuki fluttered her eyelashes and then started to laugh. “I’d pay to see that. Let me know if you get the chance.”

“Mine was him.” Aviva pointed at him. She smiled, crooked. “I bet you don’t even remember it.” 

He didn’t; he didn’t like that, the idea that he had been working with someone for months without knowing something so crucial. _I knew him._ “Where was it?”

“Turkey,” she said. “Maybe ten years ago. You had a red star on your arm then. We thought you were ex-Soviet.” She pushed up the sleeve of her left shirt to reveal a long, thin scar. “You knifed me in the Grand Bazaar.” 

He shook his head, fingers curling in towards his palms. “I don’t remember.”

“No hard feelings,” she said. “You could have killed me, but you didn’t. You just got me out of the way.” Aviva dropped her sleeve. “What about you? Toughest fight.”

 _Your name is James Buchanan Barnes_. 

_I’m not going to fight you._  
  
“I’m usually too far away for it to be much of a fight,” he said. His trigger finger twitched. 

“Amen,” Yuki said. 

He and Yuki packed up the cargo while Aviva and Bravo kept watch. He liked Yuki, who was calm and unshakeable, a natural leader. She preferred to avoid collateral damage when they could and planned each mission to the last detail. It was easy to relax around her, which was why he wasn’t expecting it when she turned to him and said, “You were in DC last year.”

His hand slipped on the bottom of the box in his arm. Yuki smiled slightly, leaning against the back of the truck, and said, “I do my research.”

“I was there,” he said. 

“Our next trip is over there,” she said. “Will that be a problem?”

 _Bucky?_  
  
“No,” he said. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Good. We’ll use you as cover just to be safe, in case anyone remembers you.” Yuki’s smile turned sly. “Somehow I think someone will.”

“Metal arm’s a giveaway, right?” he said. Yuki let out a surprised bark of laughter, and he smiled tightly in response. 

 

“Ah, the seat of democracy,” said Bravo as they flew in over DC, peering out the window. “I can practically smell the drone strikes.”

Aviva laughed and stretched her legs out into the aisle. “Now that’s what I call government oversight.”

He folded his arms over his chest and looked out the window at the river. He had scraped its mud from his boots in the hotel before rinsing the blood down the drain. The Captain had looked near dead on the shore, but he had been breathing. He was heavier than he looked. _You’re my friend_.

“Hey,” Aviva said, turning to look at him. She had cut her curly hair to her chin and she looked much younger. A useful trick, he thought. “You’re being quiet, even for you.”

“Don’t have a lot to say,” he said. “What, want me to sing you a song?”

“I’d love that, actually,” Aviva said, mouth curving into a smirk. 

Yuki clapped her hands for their attention, looking over at them with fond exasperation. “We’re here to escort Valentine Fontaine from her current position at the Italian embassy and fly her to her ship. She is not particularly well-liked in DC, not to mention America in general, and there are rumors she has ties to criminal organizations.” 

“Not that we’re judging,” Bravo said. 

“I’ll stay with Fontaine the whole way,” Yuki said. “Aviva, you’re providing cover from the front. Bravo, the back. And –”

“Yeah, yeah, he’ll be up on some rooftop like he’s Hawkeye or something,” said Bravo. “We know the drill, Yuki.”

“Karpov has particular interest in seeing this job done well,” Yuki said, ignoring him. “Get Fontaine to that ship unharmed and we’ll be well rewarded. We’re landing in ten minutes. Get your stuff together, we’re heading straight for the embassy.”

He lowered his goggles and put on his mask once they had deplaned. He felt safer with his face covered, though he had no illusions that it would prevent people from recognizing him. They let him out of the car close to the embassy so he could get to the roof and provide cover for Fontaine’s exit. He let Yuki know when he had set up, his rifle aimed at the back entrance to the embassy. 

He breathed in; breathed out, finger resting next to the trigger. Through the scope, he saw the back door open. Yuki approached the door, keeping her body between Fontaine and the rest of the world. Smart. Something – a flash of color in his peripheral vision – made him pan to the right and – 

The Captain peered around the corner of the building, poised. His finger twitched towards the trigger. The Captain’s head was between his crosshairs. A perfect shot. He could have killed him long ago, when Fury sat bleeding in his apartment. It would have been so easy to kill him then, too. It was easiest to kill people when they thought they were safe. 

He pulled the trigger. 

The bullet pinged from the wall. A chunk of masonry fell to the ground and the Captain’s head jerked up, searching the roofline. He shrank back, but the Captain caught his gaze. He looked straight at him, and he said, “Bucky.”

Down below, Yuki had Fontaine in the car, safely in the back behind bulletproof glass. He should be going now to rendezvous at the airstrip. He should be halfway gone by now. He took down his rifle by memory, hand shaking, and he took the stairs down two at a time, hoping the Captain’s sense of duty would send him after the car instead of the ghost of his friend.

But the Captain was waiting for him, cornered him at the exit. He lashed out, catching the Captain on the jaw, and the Captain kept coming, pushing him back until he was up against the wall. He gritted his teeth and unsheathed his knife, pressing it against the Captain’s stomach. 

“I’ll gut you if I have to,” he said. 

“You won’t,” the Captain said. “You would have already if you wanted to. Hell, you could have shot me. You were always the best damn shot I’ve ever seen.”

He raised the knife to the Captain’s throat. The Captain turned his jaw up, even as the blade drew a drop of blood from the delicate skin of his throat. _I won’t fight you_. “I’m not your friend.”

“You are,” the Captain said, reaching up to push away the goggles. When he saw the Captain in clear light, the Captain looked – happy. Almost pleased. “Kill me, if you’re going to. You’ve already saved me once.”

“I have a mission to complete,” he said. 

“Miss Fontaine,” the Captain agreed. “Do you have any idea who she is, Bucky?”

“Not part of the job.”

“She worked for HYDRA. Sam and Natasha are already at the airstrip waiting for her.” The Captain touched his metal arm, right above the elbow. He could almost imagine he felt the warmth of his palm. “Do you know what she did, Bucky? She helped redesign the machine they used to wipe your memories.”

“Stop calling me that,” he hissed. “I’m not Bucky.”

“Prove it,” the Captain said. 

He pressed the knife until a thin trickle of blood ran down the edge, down over his fingers. The Captain didn’t flinch. “Why won’t you fight me?”

“Guess I kinda like getting beat up,” the Captain said with a wry grin. He could overpower the Captain easily if he wanted; could slit his throat right now. He hesitated, then let the knife drop to his feet. 

“I’ve been remembering things,” he said. “Or I think that’s what it is. You think you know me?”

“I know you,” the Captain said. “Remember who you are, Bucky.” The Captain clasped the back of his neck, squeezing hard. “A good man.”

“I’m not your goddamn Bucky!” he snapped, shoving him off. “Bucky is _dead_ , he died seventy years ago!”

The Captain smiled, crooked. “So did I,” he said. 

“I’m not your friend,” he said. _Till the end of the line._

“Well, I’m yours,” the Captain said. “Always.”

He stared at the Captain, at his wide, hopeful eyes and still-smiling mouth. “How have you even survived this long?”

“Dumb luck, mostly,” the Captain said. 

He narrowed his eyes and pushed past the Captain. He was late to meet his team. _You’re my friend_. _You know me. Sometimes I think you like getting punched_.

“Don’t trust Fontaine, Bucky,” the Captain called after him. “She was part of HYDRA.”

“So was I,” he shot back, and he commandeered a motorcycle – the Captain’s, he realized – to catch up with the team down at the airstrip. He knew without looking that the Captain would follow. The Captain would always follow; and how did he know that? How did he know the Captain would be jumpstarting a car, forehead creased in concentration before he left a note in its spot saying, _borrowed, will return!_

“You’re late,” Yuki said over the comm when he was back within range. “Where have you been?”

“I encountered a problem,” he said. “I have a shadow.”

“So lose it,” Yuki said. 

“Not possible,” he said. “He knows where I’m going. The pick-up is compromised.”

Yuki swore in two languages and was quiet for a moment. He waited, glancing behind him to see the Captain’s car a hundred feet behind him. He juiced the acceleration, just as Yuki came back to say, “We’re changing the transfer site. Lead your shadow to the usual place. Can you take care of him?”

“Consider it done,” he said. 

“We’ll come in for pickup once he’s subdued.” Yuki said it like it was easy to subdue someone like the Captain, who would keep going with three bullet wounds and survived falling from the sky again and again and again. Like it was easy to quiet someone with the sincerity of belief behind him. 

Clouds were gathering overhead when he arrived at the original airstrip and dismounted the motorcycle. Romanoff was standing on the runway, facing the plane, the man with the wings from the helicarrier at her side. “Steve still hasn’t checked in,” Romanoff was saying. “Do you think he got Fontaine?”

“I think he would have said if he had,” said the flying man. 

“Sam –” Romanoff stiffened suddenly and looked around to meet his gaze. Sam turned as well, his eyes narrowing. “Well, well.”

“We look for this guy all over the damn world and he shows up back in DC,” Sam said. “What do you call that, Murphy’s Law?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Romanoff said. She pulled out her gun. He took his from his back and waited, conscious that Sam had his hand on his own sidearm. Distantly, he heard the sound of the Captain’s car arriving and then the slam of a door and running footsteps. 

“Don’t shoot!” the Captain called. “Don’t shoot, Natasha, please, Bucky –”

Romanoff didn’t lower her weapon, her expression static. “Steve, he’s dangerous.”

“He could have killed me and he didn’t,” the Captain said. “That’s gotta count for something.” He stepped towards them. “Bucky, put down the gun.”

He whirled around and fired at the Captain, the bullets taking out chunks of the pavement at the Captain’s feet. “Stay back –”

From behind him, a gun fired, and he jolted forward, right shoulder bursting into a bright flare of agony. He turned, shifting his gun to his left hand and fired at Romanoff, even as she shot him again, this time in the leg. 

“Natasha, _stop_!” the Captain shouted. “Stop –”

He tossed his weapon aside and threw himself at her, knocking the gun from her hand and getting his metal hand around her neck, squeezing hard. She glared at him, lashing out into the bullet wound in his shin, and he gripped harder. Someone grabbed at him from behind – Sam – and kicked the back of his knees, and through it all the Captain was shouting, “Don’t hurt him, please –”

Sam got his arm around his throat, pressing his forearm against his windpipe and he struggled for breath, trying to get enough strength and feeling into his wounded arm – the blood was dripping down towards his hand, he could feel the warmth on his palm – as his vision began to darken. He struggled, lifted his feet and dropped them again to throw Sam off balance, sending him flying. The Captain was still speaking, still begging them to stop – _Bucky –_

 __He pushed himself up, grabbing one of the guns – Romanoff’s, the grip was unfamiliar – and shot in their direction. There was a shout of pain, and he wanted to look back to see who it was but he was already running again, back towards the motorcycle. He kicked it to life and peeled off down the street. Blood dripped down between his fingers, his leg ached, and he kept hearing the Captain in his head, his voice so familiar. _ _Remember who you are__ , the Captain said, and he blinked once, blinked again, and –

_He's running through the streets of New York, laughing and keeping just out of reach of a small, weedy boy with blond hair. Steve. He has a loaf of bread in his hands, stolen from the bakery on 12th, and he's happy._

_Steve yells his name, and he turns, still laughing –_

_They're older now, and Steve is still weedy and small, but he's happier now, the lost look having faded from his face with the years. He's sketching on the street, intricately detailed portraits and landscapes that he sells for as much as he can get._

_"Bucky," Steve says, "you're standing in my light," and they laugh even as he flicks Steve with the end of the shoe-shining rag around his neck –_

_“Mom’s dead,” Steve says. He’s standing on his doorstep, soaked to the bone. He’s going to get sick again, and he’s gonna have to go take care of the kid until the shuddering has jarred loose the sickness from his ribs. “Can I stay here tonight?”_

_“Stay here every night if you have to, pal,” he says, and Steve comes in, not reaching out for comfort even as he turns towards him, a satellite seeking the sun –_  
  
“Hey,” Yuki said in his ear, sharp. “Where are you? What happened?”

“I’m injured,” he said, voice remarkably steady. “Wounded one of them. Where do I meet you?”

Yuki swore and didn’t speak for a moment. Then she said, “I have your location. Five miles ahead, take a left. We’ll be ready.”

He was fading with blood loss as he stumbled into the helicopter, collapsing next to Aviva. He blinked wearily at Valentine Fonataine, sleek and elegant in a black suit. She smiled thinly at him. He knew her face, the fine bones of her cheeks; he remembered them lit sharply by poor light as she peered down at him, tracing one sharp nail across his hairline. _He’s awake. Do you want me to begin?_  
  
“Ahh,” Fontaine said. “Interesting.” 

“Who are you?” he asked, trying to push forward towards her. Aviva held him back. There was a syringe between her teeth; he hadn’t noticed her unwinding gauze and a tourniquet for his leg. “I know you.”

“Do you?” Fontaine looked even more interested at that. She settled her elbows on her knees, observing him with keen-eyed interest. “How fascinating. How long have you been out of cryo?” 

He lunged for her, ignoring Aviva’s yell and Bravo pulling his gun. He pushed her back in her seat, looming over her. She stared up at him, utterly calm. “What do you know?”

“What do you?” she shot back. “I assumed you’d died along with Pierce and the rest of HYDRA. Karpov must be thrilled you survived.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aviva frown, mouthing _HYDRA_ to herself, her hand tightening on her gun. 

“Karpov?” He pushed her again; she batted him away. “What are you talking about?”

“Will you sit _down_?” Aviva demanded. “You’re bleeding all over the place.”

“He’ll be fine,” Fontaine said. “We made sure of that.”

“Who’s we?” Bravo asked. 

“Oh, sweet lambs,” Fontaine said with a trilling little laugh. “Don’t you know? Well, I suppose not everyone does their due diligence.” She turned her attention back to him. “You’ve been out of cryo for over a year. Haven’t been wiped in nearly as long, isn’t that right?” She stood, reaching out to trace along the faint scars at his temples, now covered by his hair. “You remember, don’t you?”

“Get off me,” he growled, shoving her off. “What does Karpov want with you?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Fontaine said, and this time her smile was shark-wide, “it isn’t _me_ he wants.”

“Sit down,” Bravo said from behind him. “We have a long way to go.”

He looked around, from Aviva with the syringe in her hand, to Bravo who had pulled out his gun. They were over the ocean now, making for the harbor and the ship waiting to take them – take _him_ – back to Karpov. In his ear, Yuki said, “Stand down.”

Outside the window, he could see the slow rise and fall of the waves. It wasn’t so far, really – a short drop. He started to sit, waiting until Bravo relaxed his grip, and then he flung himself towards the door, scrabbling at the handle. Aviva yelled something as he wrenched the door open. Someone – Bravo, judging by the sheer strength of it, pulled at his arm and there was a sharp prick at his neck. He thrashed hard, nearly throwing Bravo off, but his limbs dragged him down, heavy as stone, and his vision went dark as he fell, once again, into sleep. 

 

_It’s cold, and they’re crammed a dozen to a cell. Once every few days, the guards will take one of their number away. A few come back, weak and raving, but most don’t. Jeffords cries for three days after they return him, shaking in his corner of the cell, and he slits his wrists with a piece of glass._

_The next time the guards come, he stands up and says, “Take me,” and he’s never felt stupider in his life, because they take him at his word, but he knows it’s what Steve would have done. They take him down a twisting series of halls, and he quips that it’s awfully confusing, don’t they find it hard with those visors of theirs? Isn’t it embarrassing they’re all wearing the same clothes? One hits the back of his head to shut him up, and he laughs._

_He’s strapped to a table, and here the bravado that had kept the shakes of fear at bay vanishes, but he still manages not to scream when the little scientist approaches him and lifts his dog tags to read off his name, “For the records, you see.”_  
  
When he awoke, Fontaine was standing over him, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. She had changed into a lab coat, buttoned up to her collar. “Welcome back,” she said. “You’ve been out of cryo for a long, long time.”

They were on a boat, he could tell. Likely the boat he was told they would be using to escape with Fontaine. “HYDRA doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Of course it does,” Fontaine said briskly. “Cut off one head, yes? Not that it matters, as I am not part of HYDRA. You are a valuable asset. You think they are the only ones who would want you?” She stroked her hand down the side of his face. “I thought I had done so well on your programming. Tell me, what was it? Did you visit New York again?”

“New York?” But even as he asked, he remembered – going off the radar for three days after completing his assignment, wandering through Brooklyn searching for _something_. But everything had felt unfamiliar and wrong, and they had picked him up from his hideout in a warehouse before bringing him back to be wiped again. “I’ve been remembering things.”

“Is that right?” Fontaine’s eyes narrowed. “Well. We can take care of that.”

“Why?” he asked. “I can work for you, if you want.” _Let me keep these_ , he didn’t say. Maybe they were real, maybe they were made-up, false, implanted by someone to make him doubt himself, but they were _his_. 

“You’re no use to us as an independent thinker,” Fontaine said coldly. “Lie back, now. Or Bravo here will have to do it for you.”

Bravo appeared in his field of vision. He carried his gun at his chest, and his expression was eerily impassive. “Do what the lady says, John Doe.”

He started to do as he was told, years of Pierce gazing at him and saying, “Sit back,” and “We have a mission for you,” telling him to do it. Memories of the past were useless; they were nothing but images of who he had once been and he wasn’t that boy any longer. Maybe his past held the Captain’s Bucky inside it, but he wasn’t Bucky and he never would be. Never mind that the memories of the Captain’s smile made him want to be. 

It would be so much easier to just forget all over again and let them do what they like. No more choosing where to go or what to do. No more impossible questions about who he had once been. No more wandering. He sat back in his seat, hands braced on the armrests. He knew what came next. 

He opened his mouth for the tongue depressor and squeezed the chair. Fontaine had turned her back on him, preparing an injection. He already felt the phantom tingle of electricity at his temples. _Bucky?_

He wrenched himself upright, spitting out the tongue depressor. Bravo took a step forward, gun rising, and he threw himself at Bravo, yanking the gun from his grip and using it to knock him out, the butt of the gun hitting Bravo’s temple with a heavy thud. He turned the gun on Fontaine, who raised her hands in surrender. 

“I’m leaving,” he said. “Don’t come after me.”

“We’ll find you again,” she said. “Count on it.”

“I’ll kill you before you take me again,” he said. He shot at her, intentionally missing so that she would throw herself to the ground and he could run for the stairs. At the top of the stairs were Aviva and another guard. She held up her hands and yelled, “Doe!” but the guard at her side fired at him, bullet pinging off the wall next to his head. He shot back, catching the guard in the knee, and took the stairs two at a time. Aviva ducked back out of the hall, and he threw the door at the top of the stairs open, bursting out into the open air and to find Yuki waiting for him. 

“Don’t make me shoot you,” she said, gun trained on him. “You’re too valuable.”

“This was all a trap, wasn’t it?” he asked. “From the beginning.”

“I don’t know about from the beginning,” Yuki said. “But yes. It was.”

“Get out of my way,” he said. His chest was tight. He imagined Yuki throwing down her gun, but he knew better. She would never waver. He raised his stolen gun. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Yuki shot first, catching him in the left shoulder, right where his metal arm met flesh. He fell back a step and fired in return, wincing as the recoil jolted his wound. He didn’t know how many people were aboard the ship – it had to be more than just his crew, he had already seen Aviva with a guard he didn’t recognize – and the shots were sure to have roused them. He dropped the gun and kicked out, sweeping Yuki’s legs from under her. There was no point in fighting; he needed to get off the ship most of all. 

He ran for the edge of the ship, planted his hands on the rail, and then lurched forward as another shot rang out. His back exploded in pain and he chanced one look back to see Yuki, clutching a wound in her side and limping, her gun leveled on him. 

“You’ll never make it,” she said. “Where are you going to go?”

He looked at her, her dark, steady gaze, and the harbor breeze flickered through his hair. He flung himself over the side of the ship and dropped, feet first, into the sea. He closed his eyes as he plunged into the water and let the current take him where it would. 

__

_Steve is fighting in a back alley, bleeding from the lip and grinning like a loon, shouting, “Come on,” even as his legs waver. He calls Steve’s name, punches the first of Steve’s attackers to turn around, and lets Steve help him knock out the second._

_“You’re gonna get yourself killed one of these days, you know,” he says, and Steve shakes his head._

_“Too stupid to die, Buck,” he says, quoting the doctors that have said that a hundred times over the years when they looked at Steve’s fragile body –  
_  
 _They’re in a battered apartment and he's saying, "I've joined up, Steve," and Steve looks like he's going to fly apart, his eyes huge and terrified._

_"You can't go, not when I can't follow," Steve says, and nothing, nothing has ever terrified him as much as the idea of Steve, idealistic, brave Steve out there in the war, not the news of bombs falling in Hawaii, not his draft summons, not even the thought of leaving the only home he has known for his entire life._

_"I can't let you," he says and –  
_  
 _He's fighting in Germany and the ground explodes nearby, and his last thought is of Steve, will he even get a letter? Will he be safe alone in the city? Has he stopped picking fights on the street?_

_He's screaming as they inject him with what feels like pure fire, setting his veins alight. He can see better in the dim light now, and when they test his pain tolerance by pressing hot irons to him he doesn’t scream. He just hopes that Steve never finds out what they did to him –_

_Somehow Steve is there, but he's different, taller and broader and _more_ , but he still looks at him with that same awed, amazed expression. _

_"I thought you were shorter," he says to Steve, and Steve laughs a little, choked and pained._

_And he's falling, shouting as he reaches out for the hand that doesn't arrive in time. He falls and falls and falls –_

__“Is he dead?”

“I think he’s breathing.” A hand pressed to his neck. He struggled to move; his left arm wouldn’t budge. “There’s a pulse.”

He coughed, opened his eyes, and immediately winced at the sunlight. He was on a boat; he could tell from the rocking. He turned his head, met the eyes of a young man, maybe seventeen. “I need a doctor,” he said.

“A mechanic is what you need,” said the other voice. An older woman, probably the boy’s mother – they had the same dark eyes and curly hair – moved into his field of vision. “That arm of yours doesn’t seem to be working.”

“Is there someone we should call?” the boy asked. “Anyone who can help you?”

He coughed, seawater spilling over his lips. Unbidden, he said, “The Captain. Captain America.”

“Uh,” said the boy. “I don’t know if we can call Captain America for you? He doesn’t have, like, a Batsignal or anything.”

 _He’ll find me_ , he thought. He knew this with such surety that he let himself go, slipping back into unconsciousness. The Captain would come for him.

_He wakes and sleeps and wakes and sleeps, and there's blood on his hands every time, blood he doesn't remember. He lifts his gun, peers through the scope, fires – watches the spray of blood to be sure, then vanishes into the crowd. He kills and kills and kills, sometimes disappearing in a haze of confusion, other times leaving behind a trail of wreckage, and every time he feels the pride of a job completed._

_The world changes; buildings grow taller and the cities larger. He loses himself in the crowds, goes missing for three days and is shaking when they find him. He doesn’t resist when they take him, bowing his head when Pierce says, “You have disappointed me.” He knows what’s coming now; he bares his teeth and lets himself get put away like the defective weapon he is._

_He fights, electricity thrumming through is body. He’s on a street, fighting a man who says, “_ Bucky _?” and for a moment he starts to turn like it’s calling him, but he doesn’t know anyone named Bucky. He’s never known anyone named Bucky.  
_  
 _But he knows this man, knows that voice somehow and he thinks about and thinks about it until they strap him down and this part he remembers every time, the screaming pain as every nerve in his body is lit with fire and all he can do is try not to struggle._ Kill him for us.

“Bucky,” the Captain said. “Wake up. Please, wake up.”

He struggled to obey, pushing against the exhaustion settling deep in his bones. There was a hand on his face, on his arm, on his chest. Someone called for an IV. There was a needle in his arm; he couldn’t move. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but there was something in his throat, and his thoughts grew scattered again, drifting to pieces as he heard the Captain asking, “Is he going to be okay?”

_“I thought you were taller,” he said._

_“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” the Captain – Steve – the Captain (the Star-Spangled Man with a Plan) says._

_He shoots, hits the Captain in the leg; he could have hit him in the back. He can. He hesitates, staring up at his back. He wills the Captain to turn and look at him again with that knowing gaze. His finger twitches on the trigger._

_“I’m with you to the end of the line,” the Captain says._

_“Not without you!” he screams and nothing has ever been more true in his life. Not without Steve, not ever again. He’ll never leave Steve behind if he can help it._

_The Captain is heavy. His body drags against his arm. He deposits the Captain on the riverbank and gazes down at his slackened face, bruised and battered, surely beyond recognition. But he knows the Captain’s eyes.  
_  
 _“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”_  
  
Remember who you are _, the Captain says._

Bucky Barnes opened his eyes and said, "Steve."


	2. ii.

When Steve was six years old, he got into a fight on the playground when a boy two years older than him and twice his size wouldn’t stop throwing spitballs at their teacher. He spent the morning lesson watching Miss Catherine get more and more upset, chewing at her lower lip until she had almost completely worn away at her lipstick, each fresh throw shaking her even more. He sat and stewed, hands clenched into fists on his desk, and as soon as she let them out, he marched up to George and said, “You’re going to apologize to Miss Catherine and you’re going to stop throwing spitballs at her.”

George laughed and said, “I am? Why would I do that?”

Steve held up his fists. He didn’t know much about fighting, but one of the neighbors had taught him to throw a punch the first time Ma got sick because he would need to take care of himself. “Cause I’m gonna make you.”

George threw the first punch and it knocked Steve clear off his feet, but that didn’t deter him. He got back up and thrust out his own fist, aiming for George’s stomach. It hurt when it made contact, his knuckles aching, and he didn’t move back fast enough to miss George’s next swing. That one caught him under his jaw and he fell back, tears coming to his eyes. His palms scraped against the ground and he winced, holding them up to see blood starting to ooze through his skin. 

“Hey!” someone shouted, and a boy from their class, the dark-haired boy who sat at the back and sometimes made jokes under his breath, came striding over. “Why are you picking on Rogers?”

“He started it!” George said. 

“Maybe if you didn’t act like a jerk,” said Steve’s rescuer, and he shoved George back a step. “Leave him alone, George.”

George shoved back, and then the other boy punched him and that was when Miss Catherine came running out, shouting for them to stop hitting each other, for God’s sake and grabbed them all by the collars to drag them to see the headmaster. 

And that was how Steve met Bucky Barnes. 

 

It took him three days to recover from his wounds. His doctor was fascinated by his healing process, talking excitedly every time she was in the room about how that bullet wound through the back should have killed him. He understood her excitement, even appreciated how dedicated she seemed to him, but every time she mentioned it, he saw Bucky’s empty gaze as he fired the gun. Sam picked up on it halfway through the second day and interrupted the doctor with a smile and asking her about his neck, it was a little sore, could it be whiplash?

He had scars, one on his lower back and one on his stomach, a little to the left of his belly button, just like Natasha’s. It hurt for days even after he was healed, twinging when he sat up from his borrowed bed in Sam’s house. Sometimes when he was half-awake, he thought he was seventeen again and aching from the pneumonia. He turned over, looking for Bucky asleep on the floor next to him – “Take the bed, Steve, you’re the sick one” – and instead saw his shoes, lined up neatly at the side of the bed. 

He stuck around DC for a while, through Natasha’s hearings, helping clean up the mess where he could. He salvaged what was worth saving from his SHIELD-assigned apartment (and in retrospect, he should have known better than to accept it, but it just hadn’t seemed worth looking for one on his own) and brought it back to Sam’s. Sam stopped asking him if he wanted to do things after the first few weeks, leaving Steve to reading Bucky’s file and all the information he could find about him on the internet. 

“You’re gonna drive yourself crazy reading all that stuff,” Sam said when he came home from the VA and found Steve sitting at the computer again, fidgeting with the touchpad to get it back to the article on an assassination in the Ukraine. “You need to get out and do something.”

“Like what?” Steve asked. “I don’t even know where I’d find him, and SHIELD isn’t exactly around to give me missions.”

“What about your Avenger buddies?” Sam suggested, leaning against the doorframe. “One or two of them might have some ideas for things to do. And not to make this about me, but I bet Stark could make me a sweet new pair of wings.”

Steve involuntarily winced at Stark’s name. “I’m not eager go asking Stark for favors.”

“Let me suggest Ultimate Fighter again,” said Sam. “Or male model? That’s an option too.”

Steve laughed despite himself and rubbed his forehead. “I guess you’re right. I just don’t want to give up on him.”

“Think of it this way.” Sam came over and leaned over Steve’s shoulder to close the internet window for him. “The more you get out there, the more likely you are to hear about an assassin with a metal arm.”

As it turned out, he didn’t need to go to Stark; Stark came to him. He pulled up at Sam’s a day later in a sleek black car and came strutting out in a suit that cost probably a couple grand. Steve, who had gone to the window at the sound of a car pulling in, opened the door and crossed his arms. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked. 

Stark raised his eyebrows, lips turning up. “Is that any way to greet someone you saved the world with? Never mind, I don’t have time to be offended. But let the record show I am definitely offended.” 

“Stark,” he said. 

“Right, the point.” Stark lifted his sunglasses. “First, you should call me Tony. Second, I hear you’re out of a job. I’ll refrain from saying I told you so, because I think you already know that, but the point is – I’m offering you employment.”

“I don’t want to work at Stark Industries,” Steve started. 

“Not Stark,” said Tony. “I want you to – well, I’ve been making some changes to the tower after the whole Loki thing took apart half of it and since SHIELD went kablooey, I’ve been using it to do the intelligence gathering that SHIELD used to.”

“Is that legal?”

Tony waved his hand. “Legal-ish. Now I’m pretty good and I can fly and everything, but even I can’t take care of everything. There are some places a super soldier could be pretty handy.”

“And you’d be giving me orders?” Steve asked skeptically. 

“I’d be giving you intel,” Tony said. “You can decide what missions you take.”

Steve thought it over, glancing around at Sam’s house. “Can I bring a friend?”

“You have friends?” Tony shook his head. “Sorry, knee-jerk reaction. Sure, no problem. You need a ride up to New York? I’ve got a plane.” 

“Hang on,” Steve said. “I’ll be right back.” He closed the door in Tony’s face and called for Sam. When Sam came out of his bedroom, rubbing sleepily at the back of his neck, Steve asked, “How do you feel about New York?”

 

To his surprise, Sam and Tony got along almost instantly. There was an awkward moment where Sam sized up Tony and said, “You’re shorter than I imagined,” and Tony drew himself up to his full height, thrusting up his chin defiantly. 

“This is what you call a friend?” he asked Steve. 

“Hey,” Steve said. “Sam, Tony, play nice.”

Sam sized Tony up, narrow eyed. Then suddenly he softened, shoulders relaxing and his smile becoming more genuine. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Stark. I hear you’ve had a bit of a difficult year.”

“Just a bit,” said Tony. “Speaking of which, Cap, where the hell were you when the President was kidnapped? I feel like that seems to be your thing.”

“I was in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” Steve said. Cleaning up after SHIELD, not that he would say that to Tony.

“I guess that’s not a terrible excuse.” Tony jerked his head towards his car. “I’ll be in there. Grab whatever you need to grab for now and I’ll have someone come down and pack the rest up for you later. Sound good?”

“I’m gonna have to let the VA know,” Sam said. “Excuse me.”

Tony thought it was hilarious that Steve’s new friend was a veteran, and Steve tried really hard not to grit his teeth as he peppered Sam with questions about his time in the military and, once he realized that Sam was part of the Falcon project, about the wings and how he liked them. Sam answered him with good grace and humor, even when Tony pulled out his phone and started pulling up Falcon schematics and scribbling over them. He even managed not to jump when JARVIS started talking over the plane’s intercom, which was more than Steve had managed to do the first time he had met the AI. 

“Well, isn’t that something,” he said, looking around. “Nice to meet you, I guess.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance as well, Mr. Wilson,” JARVIS said. “Looking at your records, I can see that you do fine work.”

“At the VA, isn’t it?” Tony asked. “Seems like kind of an odd way to spend your time.”

“I like helping people,” Sam said. “We can all use a little help sometime. I think of it as paying it forward.”

“Huh.” Tony leaned back in his seat. “You know karma is just something people believe in to make themselves feel better about their life choices.”

Steve rolled his eyes heavenwards as Sam chuckled and said, “We all have our beliefs, don’t we.”

They landed in New York and were picked up by a man who introduced himself as Happy. The ride through Manhattan was unnerving. Steve hadn’t been back much since the battle and though it had been two years, there were still buildings with bare facades and Grand Central was covered in scaffolding. He spent one New Year’s night there with Bucky, both of them drunk on cheap booze and too tired to make it back to Brooklyn. They had slept on the stairs, Steve pillowed on Bucky’s shoulder, and got shooed out in the morning by cops as hungover as they were. Steve had never been so drunk before in his life; he had spent most of the day throwing up, Bucky rubbing his back and badly suppressing his laughter. 

Stark Tower – Avengers Tower, now, he supposed – was as ugly as he remembered, but the inside had the beautiful elements of modern architecture that Steve had come to appreciate. The sunlight, the clean lines and clear lines of sight everywhere made him feel oddly safe and comforted. Tony waved them through the lobby towards the elevators, telling them that all of this was the boring stuff, the really good stuff, now that was upstairs. 

“I’ve given you the floor third from the top, right in the middle of the action,” Tony said, leaning against the elevator wall. “Floor above mine, in point of fact. But we’re not going to your floor, we’re going to our mission control, so to speak.”

“CIC,” said JARVIS. “Welcome to Avengers Tower, Captain Rogers, Mr. Wilson.”

“Thank you, JARVIS,” Steve said. He followed Tony out onto the floor and raised his eyebrows. There was a sleek computer bank in the middle of the room and a dozen screens on the far wall, but not much else. “Seems a bit bare.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s a work in progress. But it’ll do for now. Hill!”

From one of the several doors along the walls came Maria, dressed more casually than Steve had ever seen her, jeans and a t-shirt and her hair tied back loosely. “Captain,” she said, smiling. “Mr. Wilson. How do you like our set-up?”

“Not quite SHIELD,” Steve said, “but that’s probably a good thing.”

Maria’s smile wavered. “Probably. It’s just the four of us and Dr. Banner right now.”

“Banner? He’s here?”

“He’s actually doing research in, get this, New Brunswick,” Tony said. “But yeah, we have a whole special floor just for him. He’s been doing some fascinating work in our labs – anyway, Hill, the Captain’s you-know-what?”

“Right,” Maria said. “Captain, I believe you dropped something.” She ducked back through the door she’d come out of. A moment later, she returned with his shield in her hands, the paint retouched to its crisp colors, sharp as the flag.

“Fished it out of the Potomac,” Tony said. “You should really keep a better eye on that thing.”

“Especially after your dad went to all that trouble to make it for me,” Steve said, temper cracking from being in close proximity with Tony for more than a few hours. Tony pressed his lips together, but refrained from answering. Steve sighed and took the shield from Maria. “Thank you. Both of you.”

“Would you like the tour?” Tony asked. “Let me give you the tour.”

The rest of the floor had several offices, including one for Maria, and several empty rooms that were still being decided on. One had a giant television and some cozy couches and armchairs and Tony admitted, “Well, this one we’ve mostly been using as a home theatre,” before waving them out to go upstairs. 

They went through the lab spaces and the training rooms, which included a high-tech shooting range, and the room Tony called his closet because it held all of his suits. Sam and Tony had a conversation Steve absolutely could not follow about the propulsion systems and how they might be incorporated into his flying exoskeleton. He tried not to give away how lost he was, but when Sam looked over at him, he grinned and said, “I think we’re boring the Captain.”

“Right,” Tony said. “I think I know what’ll be a little bit more your speed.”

When the floors to Steve’s floor opened, Steve thought for a moment that he was stepping back in time. He stood in the doors, staring, until JARVIS said politely, “You’re holding the elevators, Captain.” 

Steve took a hesitant step forward, trying to swallow. “Tony, this is –”

“A nearly perfect replica of the apartment you lived in before World War II.” Tony shoved his hands in his pockets, looking around at the old sofa and the bed in the corner, next to the windows. There was even an easel like the one Steve used to have and an old fashioned radio on the desk against the wall. “I looked at some old pictures. Made some improvements, of course. I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to think about the past –”

Steve ignored Tony’s rambling and walked to the desk. There was a slick Stark computer, of course, and a phone, but there was also the photo of him and Bucky at the World’s Fair, the one they had shelled out for so they could have one for their place. Steve was looking a little to the left of the camera, not quite smiling. Bucky was looking at Steve with a fond grin, a lock of hair flopping down over his forehead and his arm around Steve’s thin shoulders. Steve remembered the weight of it, how warm Bucky had been along his side. He touched the frame gingerly, half-afraid it would crumble at his touch. 

“Where did you get this?” he asked quietly. 

“SHIELD – my dad, actually – had most of the stuff from your old apartment in Brooklyn collected. My dad was a big fan of yours.” Tony came to stand beside Steve. “Anyway. Do you like it?”

“I might make a few changes,” Steve said. “But Tony – thank you.” 

“You’re welcome,” Tony said brusquely, not looking at him. “Now, your flying friend I’ll have to figure out, so Sam, you want to come with me to look at the floor one up? I was gonna give it to someone else –”

Steve waited until they had disappeared into the elevator to explore the room. He kept finding modern touches, current books mixed in with the older ones, pieces of technology that wouldn’t have existed, reminders that he hadn’t fallen back in time and Bucky wasn’t about to walk through the doors complaining about old man Peterson from down the street and his dogs. There was another room off the main one with mats for sparring and a place for him to keep his suit and shield, and a bathroom that was considerably more palatial than any Steve had spent time in before. He sat on the edge of the pool-sized bath-tub and blinked rapidly at the floor until his eyes stopped stinging. 

He made his way back down to the CIC and found Maria at the main computer bank. She moved over so he could look at what she was doing and let himself get immersed in her research on the HYDRA facilities still in existence. 

 

Steve spent the first few weeks tracking down remaining HYDRA facilities. Sometimes Sam came along, sometimes Tony did, and sometimes he went in alone with Maria as backup in one of Tony’s planes. He never found any sign of Bucky. He never heard anything about him, and he supposed that was the point. Bucky would know how to disappear when he had to, and as memorable as he had to be, if he stayed off the grid, there was little way for them to find him without SHIELD’s advanced search capabilities. 

It wasn’t until Natasha returned, sporting freshly cropped hair and towing Clint, that he heard anything at all. They gathered in what Tony had decided would be the conference room, Clint dressed in civvies and hair still damp from his shower. “I leave the U.S. for a few months and you guys break SHIELD,” he said. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

“He’s not HYDRA?” Steve asked Natasha. 

“No,” she said. She met his gaze evenly and gave him a small nod. 

“Nothing personal,” Steve told Clint. “I have to ask.”

“It’s fine,” Clint said. “With my history, completely understandable.” 

“So where were you?” Tony asked. “It had better have been Mars.”

“Germany,” Clint said. “Well, Austria, and then Germany. There was this politician. I was watching him for Fury. We thought he was selling information. Turns out he was. I shot him; his bodyguard came after me. And get this.” He looked at Natasha, who nodded. “He had a metal arm.”

Steve’s head jerked up. “Long hair?”

“Yeah. Fit the description of the Winter Soldier –” Clint caught Steve’s expression and hurriedly corrected himself to, “—Lieutenant Barnes. I’ve encountered him before, I guess, but I didn’t know it was him.” Natasha made a questioning noise. “Budapest,” he told her and her already difficult-to-read expression went even more opaque. 

How did he look? Steve wanted to ask. Was he hurt? He tried to organize his thoughts, aware of everyone’s eyes on him, and eventually settled on, “Did he say anything?”

“Not much,” Clint said. “I stabbed him in the shoulder, though, so he didn’t get a lot of opportunity to.”

“How did he seem?” Steve asked, deciding not to press on the stabbed shoulder thing. 

Clint rubbed at his face thoughtfully. “I don’t know what he’s like normally, but he spoke to me. I know that’s not his usual MO. And he probably could have killed me, but hey, I’m still here. I’d like to think that’s because I’m just that good, but I’m thinking it’s more that he’s curious.”

“Curious?” 

“Yeah,” Clint said. “He was asking me questions.” 

“So Germany,” Steve said, glancing over at Sam who has been silent this whole time. “Any idea where he was before then?”

“Heard rumors of him in France,” Natasha said. “You going after him?”

“If there’s nothing else pressing here,” Steve said. 

“Choose your own adventure, pal,” Tony said. “That’s how it works here.”

“Call me if anything urgent arises,” Steve said. 

Tony’s friend Rhodey flew them to Paris in a tiny plane not much bigger than the one Howard Stark had taken Steve and Peggy in. Then, too, Steve had been preoccupied with thoughts of Bucky. He had written Bucky letters during his training and tour, but he hadn’t known how to explain Erskine’s serum and what had happened to him. Bucky hadn’t ever answered anyway. Steve tried not to take it personally; Bucky had never been the biggest fan of writing and he had to be busy. It was the longest they had gone without seeing each other since they had met and Steve had started to forget the sound of Bucky’s voice. 

Steve had always thought the two of them would grow old together; they would get jobs, Steve maybe doing something with art, painting store windows maybe, and Bucky would keep up with his work as a mechanic, maybe one day owning the place with Steve. They’d both find themselves girls, nice ones who were the best of friends too and they could all live in the same building so their kids would play. When America had joined the war, Steve knew Bucky would enlist, not because he was all that patriotic but because he felt it was right. Steve always liked that about Bucky; he in his heart knew what the right thing was and he usually tried to do it, even if was hard. 

After the war was supposed to be their time. Only they never got their afterwards, and Steve never saw the world change like he hoped it would. And Bucky – HYDRA had taken the good in him and broke it, a shattered reflection of the man he once was. 

“Thank you for the ride, Colonel Rhodes,” he said when they landed, shaking his hand. Rhodey had a strong grip and a steadying presence, one Tony probably needed. “I appreciate this.”

“It’s Rhodey, please. And any friend of Tony’s is – well, maybe not any,” amended Rhodey. “But sir, I read the comics about you all the time when I was growing up. That’s part of the reason I joined the Air Force in the first place.”

“Does Tony know that?” Steve asked, smiling. 

“No, and if you don’t mind keeping it between us, he never will,” Rhodey said. “Nice to meet you Captain Rogers, Staff Sergeant Wilson.”

Sam saluted. “It’s been an honor, sir. One day we’ll have to talk flying.”

“I’ll swing by the tower sometime,” Rhodey said. “Test your wings against my suit.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, sir,” Sam said. Steve waved farewell and the two of them stepped off the plane into the stiff Parisian breeze.

 

Bucky’s trail was hard to pick up; he was good at keeping a low profile, particularly when he hadn’t taken an assassination contract, and it took them a few days to find his first stop, an amateur smuggling operation based out of the student quarter. According to Maria, Taís Ribeiro and Edouard Zidane were former classmates who started out fencing stolen property to pay class fees and discovered a talent for moving items discreetly. Steve found it hard to begrudge them much, remembering his own art classes back in Brooklyn and how Bucky and he had scraped and saved to go together. Bucky had never been much of an artist, but he loved watching Steve work, often watching him from the couch while Steve painted from memory. Steve hadn’t felt much like drawing since the Battle of New York. He was too restless, always feeling like he could be doing something more, something useful. 

He had plenty to do now, of course, like querying Ribeiro for information on Bucky. Ribeiro didn’t seem much scared of the idea that she had been harboring a known assassin, just crossing her arms and nodding. 

“That seems right,” she said. “He was very good at frightening people. They seemed to know who he was.”

“Do you have any idea where he went after Paris?” Steve asked. 

“No,” Ribeiro said, glancing at Zidane for confirmation. “He left in the middle of the night.” 

“Did he give you any other information?” Sam asked. “His name?”

“He didn’t talk much,” Zidane said softly. “He could speak several languages, I know, but he never told us even where he came from.”

What did he seem like? Steve tried to ask. The words caught in his throat, tangling around the hope that Bucky was starting to become more like himself and catching on the fear that he was unraveling. Should I have just stayed away?

Sam took over the questions after that and let Steve look around the apartment. He wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find – what sign could Bucky leave behind, after all? – or if he just wanted to stand in the room where Bucky had slept and see if he could feel anything. He sat on the edge of the bed and imagined Bucky lying on it, wide awake and restless. Before Zola, Bucky had always slept well, unless Steve was sick. Then he’d be awake most the night listening for Steve to cough or stop breathing. Steve only knew that last part because Bucky had gotten drunk after Steve had finished getting over the flu, one that lasted nearly a whole month, and confessed he had laid awake just to hear Steve’s breath rattle around his lungs.

Steve had taken over that position out in the European theatre, listening closely to Bucky at night when they were camped out, read to get up and wake him if Bucky started having nightmares again. He could be loud, enough that they were worried about being heard. The first time Steve had woken Bucky from one, Bucky’s hand had been around his throat and even with his new strength, Steve was unnerved, gasping, “Bucky,” until his gaze cleared. 

This was no different than that; what Bucky had gone through would have killed a lesser man, or sent him so far into insanity that there was no chance of rescue. But Steve was standing because Bucky had seen it fit to drag him from the river, and that was enough for him. Bucky was out there somewhere, peeling away the thin, shoddy lie that HYDRA had tried to paper the cracks with, and Steve would find him and bring him home.

Bucky’s German employer had little good to say about him and no information about where he had gone. Greece was even less help; he had taken a contract and left after completion. They lost the trail in Lebanon, and Steve and Sam spent several fruitless days asking after him, wearing out Natsha and Maria’s contacts one by one, before Natasha called, breathless, and said, “He’s in Hong Kong. I don’t know for how much longer, but he was here.”

 

On the flight, Sam turned and said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but if we don’t find him soon, we have to take a break. You have to take a break.”

Steve, who was grateful Tony had agreed to foot the bill for their plane tickets and had sprung for the wider seats in business class, had been about to try to sleep. His eyes were gritty from nights pouring over maps and struggling to use the touchscreen computer Tony had sent along with them to pick apart the information relayed from Maria. He didn’t need as much sleep as he used to, but the edges were starting to show, and he knew it. He hated it when he heard himself being short with Sam or getting impatient while waiting in line. And still – he couldn’t stop. 

“Sam,” he started. Sam lifted his hand. 

“You want to do this yourself, and I get it,” he said. “Bucky’s the guy you lost. Hell, if I found out Riley had somehow survived, I would go through Hell to get him back home, but you have to know when to quit. Bucky just plain doesn’t want to be found, and he’s good at it. You need to rest. Get your mind off him for a while and get something done. Let Natasha and Clint do some of the legwork for us so you can recharge.”

Steve sighed and looked out the window, down through the patchwork of clouds. “I won’t be able to stop worrying about him.”

“I know,” Sam said. “But, look, you’ve been a lot in the last seventy years. Or five, depending on how you look at it. You’ve lived through more than anyone person should have to, and you put on a good face, but, Steve – I know you aren’t sleeping.” 

Steve tilted his head questioningly. Sam smiled wryly and shrugged. “I wake up, sometimes, and you’re never there. I don’t know where you go, but it isn’t bed and that’s the important part.”

Steve had tried and failed to explain to people what Bucky was to him so many times: best friend, brother, partner, his worst enemy at times – the one person who had seen Steve at his very best and his very worst and had always, always believed in him. He thought maybe Sam, who was the closest thing he’d had to a best friend since 1944, would understand what that meant. Losing him had meant losing the only family he had, the only real connection he had left to life in New York, and at the time he had pushed through the mourning by finishing the job, finishing HYDRA. Except that he hadn’t finished the job at all. HYDRA had gotten Bucky again, and this time Steve hadn’t been able to come for him. 

“Okay,” Steve said instead of any of that. “If we lose his trail again, we’ll let Natasha take over.”

Sam held out his hand and they shook on it. Then Sam reclined his seat and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna get some shut-eye while we’re in these nice-ass seats.” 

Natasha met them at the airport, looking exhausted. “I lost him,” she said. There was guilt in her voice; Steve wondered that he knew to recognize it in her now. “I had him – I couldn’t take him in by myself –”

“Hey, Natasha,” Steve said, squeezing her arm. “It isn’t your fault. You found him for me; that’s enough.”

Natasha nodded. “I know. I just know this important to you.” She blinked and then her entire face transformed in that eerie way she had, becoming calm and calculating. “Let me show you where I found him.”

She took them through Hong Kong, showing them where she had encountered him and the room she had taken him to. Steve knew that Bucky wouldn’t have stayed; he would have fled, and even with Natasha to help they were unable to turn up anything about a man with a metal arm. Sam clapped his hand on Steve’s back, face drawn, and said, “I’m sorry.”

 

New York seemed small after so many months abroad. It was odd coming back to the Avengers Tower and debriefing with Maria while listening to Tony argue with JARVIS about modifications to his suits. It was nothing like the military precision of SHIELD, which Steve had found comforting and familiar. It was something else entirely: a kind of controlled chaos that reminded him more of the USO tours than the Army. Contributing to that was Ms. Potts’s insistence that the Avengers do charity work and public appearances to foster good will. 

“People are still hurting from the Chitauri invasion,” she explained when she had Steve fitted for a tuxedo. “The city is wrecked. If we show you are helping the city in any way you can, it can only help your image.”

“It seems a little ridiculous,” he said as the tailor measured him from hip to heel. “Going to some gala isn’t going to prove I’m a man of the people more than going on missions.”

“You’ll do that too,” Ms. Potts said. “Think of this as a mission, Captain Rogers. One that’s invaluable for the Avengers’ continued existence.” 

“It’s Steve, ma’am,” he said. 

“And it’s Pepper to you,” she said. “Now, how do you feel about dress uniforms?”

Steve couldn’t help feeling like a performing monkey once again when he was wheeled out to the different events around the city. Smiling and shaking hands and laughing reminded him too much of touring the States and reading the news about battles in Germany, France, Italy, battles he knew he could make a difference in, especially with his new body. At least this time he had plenty to do in between events, Maria sending him out to take care of different HYDRA bases along with whoever else was available. Tony had cut down significantly on his work as Iron Man since the incident with the president, restricting himself to creating and maintaining tech, and Natasha and Clint tended to take more covert missions. Instead, Rhodey or Sam often came along with Steve, sometimes both, to offer air support and transportation. Rhodes was a good soldier and a good man, wry and funny in way that reminded Steve of Pepper. 

“Must be a side effect of dealing with Tony for years,” Rhodey said with a laugh when Steve mentions it. “Dealing with that guy for, Jesus, probably twenty years in my case will give you a warped sense of humor.”

“How did you meet him anyway?” Steve asked. “No offense, but you don’t really seem the galas and socialite type.”

“Could we have this conversation some other time?” Sam yelled over the comm, just as a grenade landed at Steve’s feet. Rhodey swooped down and snatched him out of the blast radius before dropping him atop two mercenaries. Steve took them out with judicious application of his shield and well-aimed kicks to the sternum. The mercenary camp wasn’t particularly well-equipped with areas of cover, but he made due with what he had. He crouched down to pick up one of their fallen weapons and peered out. 

“We met at MIT,” Rhodey said, blasting one of the mercenaries back. “He was the punkass fifteen year old genius and I was the flyboy visiting for the weekend.” 

Steve shot two mercenaries in the shoulder, dropped the gun, and vaulted out of cover. Holding his shield in front of him, he sprinted towards the last of the mercenaries, bullets hitting his shield and falling harmlessly to the ground. From overhead, Sam swooped down and kicked out two of the mercenaries. Steve punched the final one and looked back at Rhodey, who landed beside him. 

“Time to bag ‘em and tag ‘em,” Rhodey said. “I’ll pull around the plane.”

All it took were zipties and a bit of prodding to get their prisoners aboard the ship. Steve took the seat where he could watch them while Sam claimed the co-pilot seat. Rhodey picked up his story as though he had never abandoned it.

"So I'm at a fraternity party with one of the Air Force guys already at MIT and then one of them says, 'Hey, Tony Stark is here,' and everyone cheers." Rhodey laughs, easing the plane up and off the ground, the mercenaries trussed up at the back. "All I know about Tony Stark at this point is that he's the heir to Stark Industries and that he's just a kid. So I'm expecting him to be antisocial and shy, maybe a little sheltered." 

Sam snorted. "And?"

"And he shows up in a limo, dressed in designer clothes and bearing a trunk full of thousand dollar champagne." Rhodey laughed. "He found out I was still undecided about MIT and took it upon himself to convince me."

"I take it he was successful," Steve said, smiling despite himself.

"The two years we were at MIT together were some of the best times of my life, so yeah. He was successful." Rhodey guided the plane above the clouds, humming to himself. It took Steve a moment to recognize it as the band Tony liked to listen to. AC-something. Steve hummed along and, after a moment, Sam began to sing the melody softly, grinning back at Steve. 

Maria met them at the plane after they dropped off the mercenaries at a military base. Steve took off his helmet and nodded to her. “Maria.”

“Captain.” She gestured to her new personal assistant, Kate, who held out her hands for the helmet. They were working on acquiring a staff, apparently, but Tony was understandably leery of who he hired and Maria herself had developed intense and rigorous screening methods. Steve, for his part, liked to talk to the new hires himself and get a sense of the kind of person they were. Some of them were intimidated by Steve; Kate was not one of them. 

“You ruin everything you put on,” Kate said, turning the helmet over in her hands. “And you know this thing only works if you wear it, right?”

“I wear it!” Steve protested. 

“You take it off all the time,” Sam said. “Every chance you get, which I understand. You gotta show off that fine face of yours.”

“This is the only part of your uniform that doesn’t have scorch marks, dirt, or blood on it,” Kate said. “Captain, wear the helmet.” She walked off, muttering under her breath. Maria’s mouth pressed in a thin line as she fought a smile.

“The mission was successful?” she asked as Rhodey stepped out of his suit and Sam removed his goggles and wings. At Steve’s nod, she gestured them towards the conference room. “Debrief time.”

Natasha passed by the window of the conference room while Rhodey was recounting his conversation at the army base with Maria. Steve nodded hello to her. She returned the gesture distractedly, then doubled back. Steve frowned as she tapped her left arm, above the elbow. She held up three fingers and mimed opening a book. 

“Captain, what are you looking at?” Maria asked. When Steve pointed out the window instead of complaining, Maria turned to look at Natasha before sighing and gesturing for her to come join them. “I guess we were about done anyway.”

Natasha, who now wore her hair in a tight braid most days, peeked inside the conference room. “Steve,” she said. “I might have a lead on your friend.”

Steve and Sam exchanged looks, Steve’s hopeful and Sam’s wary. Sam indicated, through his frown and crossed arms, that he still wasn’t sure about trying to help someone who had tried to kill you, Steve. Steve hoped his face conveyed that he didn’t care; that he was hopeful that the person he had grown up with was somewhere underneath the programming and memory erasure. 

“Show us,” Steve said. 

It wasn’t much, just a report from a former SHIELD operative that she had interacted with him while in Peru doing recon for Maria. She hadn’t realized it was the Winter Soldier until she read Natasha’s description of him. He was very quiet and polite, her report said. He did his work well. He left once he had reported back in and I haven’t seen him since.

“So he’s alive,” Steve said. He was more relieved than he expected, spine straightening and the worry that has hung over him loosening. “And he’s doing all right.” The report didn’t quite sound like Bucky – he could be polite and charming when he wanted, but quiet had never been the best descriptor for him – but it was better than hearing news of another assassination or robbery. 

“I’m sorry it isn’t more,” Natasha said. “I’ll keep digging.”  
Steve thanked her.

"It's not strictly related to Barnes," Natasha said, "but I still thought it might be of interest." She set a file folder down on the table between them, glancing up to check that Steve was looking. The folder was labeled Project Snowfall, and there was a HYDRA insignia below it. "I found it when I was combing through the HYDRA files we've found." The way she said we told Steve that she meant Fury found it. Steve suppressed his instinctive distrust of anything Fury passed their way and opened the folder. 

Inside was the picture of a beautiful woman with dark hair, green eyes, and a snakelike smile. Her name was Diana Fontaine, and she was an Italian national, known to have freelanced as a research scientist for HYDRA. She had several doctorates, including one in neuroscience and another in psychology. Horror began to stew in the pit of Steve's gut as he realized where this was leading. 

Sure enough, when he turned the page he found several sheets of dense notes from Dr. Fontaine describing the various methods she had tried for ensuring the instant, blind obedience from the man they persisted in calling The Winter Soldier. Bucky would love that name, Steve knew, if it didn't apply to him. He would think it grand and dramatic. He pushed the files over so Sam could read them and looked up at Natasha, nodding for her to continue. 

"For the past six months, Fontaine has been holed up in the Italian embassy in DC," Natasha said. "She is in popular demand for her services, but she knows that she has been compromised in the files leaked from SHIELD." Natasha allowed herself a small smirk. "But something has her on the move. I learned that she will be leaving in a week's time."

"What's the play?" Sam asked. 

"She could be valuable for information on the whereabouts of Barnes and HYDRA," Natasha said. "I propose we bring her in for questioning, maybe convince her to turn to our side. I have a lead on the people she's in contact. If we get in position, we can intercept her as soon as she leaves the embassy." She shook her head. "I know it's not en vogue to say so, but I miss SHIELD's blatant disregard of governmental jurisdiction."

Steve privately admitted that it certainly was easier to barge on through the way they used to, but Tony's little enterprise was only allowed to continue due to some very careful bargaining with the US government. They weren't to upset any foreign powers. They weren't, more to the point, to start any wars. They would have to move carefully to acquire Fontaine. If Natasha's intel was correct -- and she was rarely wrong -- then they would have only a few minutes to seize Fontaine. 

"Let's get going," Steve said. "The sooner we start preparing, the smoother this will go."

They made their base Sam's place in DC, Natasha taking the guest bedroom and Steve and Sam splitting the master bed. Listening to Sam breathe in the dark, Steve recalled the winter his mom had died. He had spent most of three weeks curled up in Bucky's bed wracked with the flu that had taken his mother. Bucky worked during the day and most of the early evening before coming home to sleep with his back to Steve's, heedless of the danger of getting sick himself. Steve might have been buried alongside his mother were it not for Bucky's stubborn determination not to give up on him.

"You're a goddamn fighter, Steve. I've seen it," Bucky had said. "You pick more fights than anyone I know. You're not going to let some damn fever beat you."

Steve had laughed, chest rattling. "I think I've got it on the ropes now," he said. "Just a few more days. You'll see."

The second morning they spent in DC, Steve made his excuses and went to see Peggy. It was dual pleasure and sorrow every time he spoke to her these days. She was still beautiful, still startlingly intelligent and insightful, still able to look inside Steve's head and work out what he was thinking. But it was horrible to see her so diminished and to see the vitality slowly draining from her body. Sometimes she slept through his entire visit. He sat beside her and imagined years of Peggy asleep beside him, her brown curls strewn over the pillow and her breath a soft, gentle gust across to him. 

She was awake today, and she recognized him with no trace of alarm, so it was one of her good days. Steve sat beside her and told her a little about what he had been doing with Tony. She loved hearing stories of Tony, who she remembered as a boy. "It was dreadful when Howard and Maria died," she said softly. "I was at the funeral. He was hardly more than twenty. Didn't say a word, not even for the eulogy. That bastard Stane gave it instead." She waved her hand. "But enough of that. Tell me, why are you back in DC?"

He told her about Fontaine; and reluctantly, when she showed signs of confusion, he explained about Bucky. She seemed as startled as he had been to learn Bucky was alive, which was reassuring even though it was horrible. He had, in his darker hours, contemplated the possibility that SHIELD had somehow been involved in the recovery of Bucky's body, or perhaps even recruited into the organization the same way so many HYDRA agents had been. The report Natasha had given him said Bucky had first been found by Russian soldiers before being sold to HYDRA, which of course had been operating inside SHIELD, but the idea of Howard or Peggy having known -- having been complicit -- in what happened to Bucky twisted at Steve. 

"Oh, Steve," Peggy said, taking his hand in hers. "If I had known, you know I would have done everything to help him. I know how much he meant -- means -- to you."

Steve squeezed her hand. "I know, Peggy." He was quiet for a moment, looking down at the incongruity of her age-spotted and wrinkled hand in his youthful one. "I'm scared that I won't be able to save him."

"You can't save everyone, Steve," Peggy said. "But if anyone can bring Barnes to his senses, it would surely be you. He loved no one else like you." 

"We were like brothers," Steve said. "I barely remember a time before I knew him."

"I know," Peggy said. She smiled briefly. "You have no idea, do you, just how famous the pair of you are."

"I'm sorry?"

"It's more than the exhibit at the Smithsonian," Peggy said. "There was a movie made, about ten years ago or so, and a few more in the decades before that. Movies with you in them, I mean. Only two were actually about you. I think people were rather afraid to touch the legend of Captain America." She settled back against the pillows with a sigh. "I'm afraid I'm getting a bit tired, my dear. Thank you for coming by."

Steve patted her hand. "Sleep well, Peggy," he said before rising to his feet. Her eyes were already closed by the time he was at the door. He lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching her sleep; then he slipped away, out to the street. 

"Oh, yeah," Sam said when Steve recounted the latter portion of his conversation with Peggy. "I saw a couple of those. Mostly you just showed up in a scene or two to drop some wise axiom about America and the virtues of violence in the face of evil or some bullshit. The one they made a few years back, though, that one was about you -- mostly about you growing up in Brooklyn. It was pretty good. Kind of like The Motorcycle Diaries, you know, a story about a famous person before they were famous -- you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"We didn't get capitalist trash like that in Russia," Natasha said dryly to Steve before turning to grin at Sam. "Are you a movie nerd, Sam Wilson?"

"Hey, I like art!" Sam said. "Is that a crime?"

"Quick, top ten movies of all time," Natasha said. "And you can't combine The Godfather movies into one."

"Please," Sam scoffed. Steve left them to debate movies he mostly hadn't seen and paced the perimeter of the Italian embassy, committing the dimensions to memory. They would, he knew, be attentive despite their seemingly nonchalant conversation. They gave every impression of being a pair of friends out for a morning stroll, which Steve supposed they technically were. Sam was much better suited to Natasha's brand of incognito, easy in posture and conversation. 

He thought he caught a glint of metal up on the roof; but when he looked again, he saw it was just a satellite dish.

 

They were in position. The team picking up Dr. Fontaine was on their way. Steve didn't wear a uniform -- too flashy -- but had his shield on his back. He patrolled the back exit of the embassy, ready for a one person grab. The door opened. There was a flash of dark hair. Steve started forward --

A bullet pinged off the wall to the left of his head. 

He jerked around, looking up, and saw the dark, long hair, the metal arm, and said, "Bucky?"

 

Steve and Natasha tied off Sam's leg, staunching the blood flow from the gunshot wound. Natasha was swearing in Russian, tapping her earpiece and shouting, "Barton, I need air support now," and they were limping toward the street as Barton touched down in the quinjet. Steve hadn't even known Clint was in on the mission, though it seemed obvious now that Natasha would have made contingency plans. She seemed as shocked as him by Bucky's presence, though, and she kept swearing all the way up into the jet. 

"I'm going to kill Sharon," she said finally when Clint had taken off. "I don't know how she missed that the Winter Soldier was involved --"

"His name is Bucky," Steve said. 

"No offense, Steve, but he kind of just shot me in the leg," Sam said. "If you stop thinking of him as Bucky --"

"I'm the only who will," Steve snapped. "I know he's in there, okay? He saved my life. He was going to kill me and he dragged me out of that river."

"So he didn't leave you for dead, so what?" Natasha demanded. 

Clint raised his head and said, "I think Steve's right on this one."

They all fell silent and looked toward him. He shrugged. "Not that we can afford to go looking for him right now. We need to get Sam to a hospital. But you have to admit, if they have Barnes and they went looking for the doc that brainwashed him? Sounds like Barnes's programming is on the fritz. Means there's still something in there to wipe out."

"He still shot me," Sam said. 

"He was panicking," Steve said. "I told him who Fontaine was. Maybe -- maybe he'll see sense and get out before it's too late." He didn't know if he believed himself even as he said it. 

"We'll look for him," Clint said. "We have a lead now. We know who he's with."

It was better than nothing. 

They took Sam to the nearest hospital and got him in for surgery right away. Through sheer providence, the bullet had missed anything vital, not that it stopped Sam from making Steve and Natasha get him ice cream and a burger. Clint laughed, taking the seat next to Sam's bed, and kicked up his feet. 

"I like your style," he told Sam. "Tasha, pick me up a couple of tacos and some coffee?"

"Fuck you, Barton," Natasha said. 

Still, she did get him a coffee, with four sugars, and smiled ruefully at Steve when he looked at her. "You know," she said, without elaborating. 

They take turns sitting with Sam over the next two days, the other two doing reconnaissance on the whereabouts of Diana Fontaine and Bucky's team. They learned of a ship that departed from the harbor the same day Fontaine escaped, and Natasha's contact -- Sharon Carter, Steve was somewhat chagrined to learn -- told them the CIA thought it was likely Fontaine had been on it. "Someone pulled the strings to get it out of American waters unchecked," Carter said over video conference. "Someone with cash. I'm trying to figure out who, but my supervisor is breathing down my neck. I'm not supposed to be doing unrelated work."

"You should see if Stark has a job," Clint said. "I bet Maria would like you."

Sharon laughed. "I appreciate the offer, Agent Barton, but I can do more working within the lines. Let me know how it goes with your search."

"Will do," Clint said before ending the call. Steve sat back and rubbed his face. 

"So he could be anywhere," he said. "Anywhere at all."

"Looks like it," Clint said. "I'm gonna call Maria and ask her to start a satellite search --"

"Excuse me?" a nurse said, hovering a polite three feet away. "Mr. Rogers? You are Steve Rogers? Um, you know, Captain America?"

"Yes?" Steve said, looking up at her. "What is it?"

"There's a man in emergency asking for you," she said. "He seems very insistent on it. And he doesn't have any identification on him, so --"

"Where is he?" Steve asked, standing up so fast he nearly knocks Clint's computer off the table. 

"He's in the ER -- Mr. Rogers!"

But Steve was running, following the signs until he was shoving his way into the emergency room, gasping that his name was Steve Rogers and there was someone asking for him. And one startled nurse showed him into the room where, pallid and filth, lay Bucky, fast asleep. 

Steve sank to his knees beside the bed and took Bucky's good hand in his. "Bucky," he said quietly. 

 

Filling out the hospital paperwork was an absolute nightmare. He knew all of Bucky's vital information, of course, but getting the hospital to believe it was another matter. It took Natasha pulling up an old photo of Steve and Bucky during WWII for the nurses to believe him, and then of course Stark had to come down from New York to look at Bucky's arm while he was still sedated. Tony pronounced the arm a marvel, tinkered with it a little, then said he would have to look at it when Bucky was awake. "Bring him to New York," he said, slapping Steve's back. 

Through all of this, Bucky continued to sleep. He seemed sometimes on the verge of waking, eyes moving rapidly under the lids or eyelashes fluttering. But he slept on, and Steve stayed beside him, only moving to visit Sam, who was starting to limp around again. 

"I see how it is," he cracked when Steve made it back upstairs to see him. "I'm your one and only right up until your childhood sweetheart shows up and steals you heart --"

Steve rolls his eyes heavenward. "Sam --"

"I'm kidding, of course." Sam limped forward on his crutches to pat Steve's shoulder. "I get it. If Riley came back somehow, I wouldn't leave until I knew for sure I wasn't making it up."

"When he's back to himself, you can challenge him to some sparring to pay him back for that gunshot," Steve said with more confidence than he feels. Bucky had been in the water for some time when he had been picked up by a mother and son out for a sailing trip. He was beat up, badly, and when they learned what Steve knew of Bucky's brainwash, the doctors conferred for a long, long time. Steve waited to hear their verdict, knowing it wouldn't be good. 

"Mr. Rogers," said the bravest of the doctors. "Mr. Barnes is in excellent health, generally speaking. But if his mind is altered as you say, it may be a barrier to his return."

"I can wait," Steve said. 

Bucky came to himself once or twice, woke briefly without seeming to register anything. Steve spoke to him, trying to get his attention, but it wasn't until the end of the second week that Bucky woke with a start a little after noon and said, "Steve."

Steve straightened up from where he had been slumped over his lap, reading a magazine. "Bucky?" he said. 

Bucky slowly turned his head. He blinked uncomprehendingly, then said, "Where am I?"

"Hospital in Washington DC," Steve said. "What do you remember?"

Bucky's eyebrows drew together, pained. He breathed in slow and unsteady. "Everything," he said. 

He seemed unwilling to discuss more, so Steve let it go. Bucky was quiet for a very long time, and it was only because Steve was looking straight at him that he knew Bucky hadn't fallen back asleep. Bucky cleared his throat finally and said, "I don't know what year it is."

"It's 2015," said Steve. 

Bucky laughs, sharp and disbelieving. "Twenty fucking fifteen. And there aren't even any flying cars. Too bad Howard Stark isn't around to mock for that."

"His son is," Steve told him. "He's even more like Howard than Howard was."

"I have no idea what that means, but it sounds a little frightening," Bucky said. He was having a good stab at sounding normal, but there was a quaver to his voice. Bucky was uneasy, Steve could tell. He wished he knew what to say to ease Bucky's mind. He hated false platitudes as much Bucky did, and no amount of them would be convincing in any case.

"You'll meet him. He's pretty interested in that arm of yours." Steve gestured to the metal arm and immediately wished he hadn't. Bucky's face grew strained, his mouth a taught line. He didn't look at the arm. Steve decided he better stay quiet and looked back down at his magazine.

"It's all a mess, isn't it," Bucky said eventually. "You know they have books and movies about us, Steve? I visited that exhibit, when I was trying -- to remember." He smiled wryly. "You ever imagined we'd be heroes like that, Steve?"

"I just wanted to fight bullies," Steve said. "And to go with you. Couldn't let you have all the fun out in Germany."

"Yeah, I guess you couldn't." Bucky lifted his good hand and brushed his hair from his face. "Is your friend okay? The one I shot?" His voice cracked on the last word and he cleared his throat, frowning at himself.

"He'll be all right," Steve said. "You just get better, okay? You weren't yourself."

"Did you become a pastor while I was away?" Bucky's mouth twitched. "You're gonna give me absolution for my sins, Steve?"

"You were brainwashed," Steve said. 

"Doesn't change the fact that I killed a whole lot of people. Does being brainwashed take that away?" Bucky waved his hand. "Don't answer that."

Steve settled back in his seat, watching Bucky's face. He looked troubled, as though the weight of the last seventy years had newly fallen across his shoulders. He wanted to tell Bucky that it didn't matter, but of course it did. Bucky might not have remembered his name when he killed Jasper Sitwell, but he remembered killing him just fine. He was stuck reconciling himself with the man he had been while under HYDRA's control.

Eventually, Bucky yawned and turned his face into his pillow. "You should go to sleep, Steve. You look like hell."

"You don't look much better," Steve retorted instinctively. Bucky laughed weakly and waved his good hand at him.

"Go," Bucky said. "I'll be here."

Steve returned to Sam's apartment to sleep, after Natasha promised she would stay behind to keep an eye on Bucky. He slept for five hours and then went for a run, the excess energy built up from hours of sitting at Bucky's bedside eating away at him. It was yet another side effect from the serum. Some nights were fine, but others he found himself lying awake in bed, unable to sleep. It helped him escape the nightmares he was prone to having and which had grown more vivid in the wake of SHIELD' dissolution. 

His phone beeped as he was finishing his third circuit of the reflecting pool. Come back to the hospital, Natasha had sent. Steve jolted to a stop and stared at the message. It was devoid of Natasha's usual emoticons, which she used primarily to amuse Steve. He glanced at the street, wondering if he should catch a cab or if it would be faster to run. 

I'm sending a bike, Natasha sent a moment later. Stay put.

Almost instantly, Clint pulled up to the curb on a gorgeous black Kawasaki, tossed Steve a helmet, and scooted forward to make room. Steve hadn't ridden behind someone like this since he was small and could stand behind Bucky on their bike if he was careful. He threw his leg over the seat and hesitated for a moment before wrapping his arms around Clint's waist. 

"There you go," Clint said. "Hold on tight."

Clint accelerated so quickly Steve probably winded him. Clint seemed to have a magical touch with the stoplights in addition to a blatant disregard to yellow lights turning red. There was little chance to ask Clint if he knew why Natasha had called him back to the hospital, and when Steve finally managed to ask, Clint shrugged and said Natasha had just told him to pick up Steve.

"I don't know how she even knew where you were," Clint said.

That was a good point, too. Steve had grown accustomed to taking the things Natasha knew for granted, though that seeming omniscience had faded a little with the collapse of SHIELD. He was willing to bet she had tagged everyone she considered part of her team. When they first met he might have considered that disturbing, but he knew now that was the biggest sign of affection Natasha could bestow.

She was waiting for them outside Bucky's room. Steve frowned, taking in her taut mouth and furrowed brow. "What is it?"

"He jumped out the window," Natasha said. She opened the door to reveal Bucky's room in total disarray. The bed sheets were thrown over the floor, and the window to the street was shattered. There was no sign of Bucky. "He asked me to get the nurse because his button wasn't working and when I came back --" Natasha shook her head and swore in Russian. "I'm sorry, Steve. He's gone."


End file.
